A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

86the Mess Hall, I had to eat everywhere else. Everything began to be inside out. And the mannext to me at night, coughing himself inside out. That was when things began to change. Oneday I couldn't make out what was happening to the corporal's face. It kept changing into faces Iknew from somewhere else, and then I began to think he looked like me, and then he . . ."Leper's voice had thickened unrecognizably, "he changed into a woman, I was looking at himas close as I'm looking at you and his face turned into a woman's face and I started to yell foreverybody, I began to yell so that everyone would see it too, I didn't want to be the only one tosee a thing like that, I yelled louder and louder to make sure everyone within reach of my voicewould hear—you can see there wasn't anything crazy in the way I was thinking, can't you, Ihad a good reason for everything I did, didn't I—but I couldn't yell soon enough, or loudenough, and when somebody did finally come up to me, it was this man with the cough whoslept in the next cot, and he was holding a broom because we had been sweeping out thebarracks, but I saw right away that it wasn't a broom, it was a man's leg which had been cut off.I remember thinking that he must have been at the hospital helping with an amputation whenhe heard my yell. You can see there's logic in that." The crust beneath us continued to crackand as we reached the border of the field the frigid trees also were cracking with the cold. Thetwo sharp groups of noises sounded to my ears like rifles being fired in the distance.I said nothing, and Leper, having said so much, went on to say more, to speak above thewind and crackings as though his story would never be finished. "Then they grabbed me andthere were arms and legs and heads everywhere and I couldn't tell when any minute—""Shut up!"Softer, more timidly, "—when any minute—""Do you think I want to hear every gory detail! Shut up! I don't care! I don't care whathappened to you, Leper. I don't give a damn! Do you understand that? This has nothing to dowith me! Nothing at all! I don't care!"I turned around and began a clumsy run across the field in a line which avoided his houseand aimed toward the road leading back into the town. I left Leper telling his story into thewind. He might tell it forever, I didn't care. I didn't want to hear any more of it. I had alreadyheard too much. What did he mean by telling me a story like that! I didn't want to hear anymore of it. Not now or ever. I didn't care because it had nothing to do with me. And I didn'twant to hear any more of it. Ever.